“We wanted to use [the wedding] as an
opportunity to really encapsulate our values
as a couple and as individuals,” Ashley
says. “And one of the ways that we kind of
formed [those values] was around Burning
Man.” The event has 10 central principles
meant to guide attendee behavior and
culture. Ashley says they wanted to plan
their wedding around two principles—
community and participation. They decided
to host a Memorial Day weekend camping
trip in the Blue Ridge Mountains of
southwest Virginia in 2018.

A SPECIAL MOMENT: Micah is the
son of divorce attorney Marna Tucker and
former Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of
Federal Claims Lawrence Baskir. His father
can’t travel because he was paralyzed from
a stroke. A week before Micah and Ashley’s
wedding in the mountains, they were legally
married at his parents’ Chevy Chase home
by Merrick Garland, the chief judge of the
U.S. Court of Appeals’ D.C. Circuit, who
is a Bethesda resident and family friend.

THE COUPLE: Micah Baskir, 38, grew

up in Chevy Chase and graduated from
Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School. He is a
documentary ;lmmaker. Ashley Stracke, 32,
grew up in Lewisville, Texas, and works for
the mayor of Los Angeles in neighborhood
services. They live in Los Angeles.

HOW THEY MET: Ashley and Micah
were introduced by mutual friends at a pub
in Pasadena, California, in 2010. Micah
was leaving in a couple of days for Burning
Man, a weeklong event in Nevada’s Black
Rock Desert, where tens of thousands of
people gather to perform music, create art
installations and burn a wooden structure
of a man. Ashley had never been, and was
skeptical of both the event and Micah. “I
wasn’t particularly interested but he tried
to convince me that I was mistaken,” she
says. “And [he] did a pretty good job.”

THE FIRST DATE: After Micah returnedfrom Burning Man, he invited Ashley overto his cousin’s house in L.A., where hewas house-sitting. They ate Thai food fromAshley’s favorite place and watched TheWest Wing. The couple went to BurningMan together one year later. “I’m de;nitelya convert,” says Ashley, who has been atotal of six times now.

THE PROPOSAL: About ;ve years into
dating, the couple made plans for a New
Year’s vacation to Russia and France.

Micah decided the trip would be the
perfect opportunity to propose. While in
St. Petersburg, Russia, on New Year’s
Eve, they saw The Nutcracker at the
Mariinsky Theatre and cooked a Russian
dinner complete with blinis at their
Airbnb. Micah had planned to propose in
Palace Square at midnight, but they were
watching President Putin’s speech on the
Jumbo Tron, and he talked right through
New Year’s. “I don’t speak Russian that
well so I don’t know what he was saying,”
Micah says. “But he just kept talking
and talking.” The couple wandered to the
banks of the Neva River, where teenagers
were lighting off ;reworks in the snow. He
got down on one knee and proposed.